The Bird Room

Reviews / Votes

Those who seek something unique in the contemporary British novel will delight in this adroit, snappy debut, a dark and beguiling meditation on the weight of being . . . A novel so fresh it practically pings with energy . . . Fizzes with deadpan wit and cutting one-liners. * * Independent * * The Bird Room is a hall of mirrors...sparely written, cool, jaunty, darkly comic, with a sharp ear for voice and manner...it displays exuberant brio. * * Guardian * * Killen creates a cast of unlikeable and morally dubious characters yet still makes his book compelling. There are also flashes of linguistic brilliance which suggest greater things to come from the 27-year-old writer. * * Financial Times * * A darkly stylish comedy of sexual manners...Killen evokes a grimy world of sexual tension with unerring, uncomfortable accuracy...Much of The Bird Room's appeal is down to Killen's taut, sharp prose style - not flashy but alternately laconic, melancholy and dryly witty - that gives an edgy, sometimes creepy and very contemporary sense of beauty to the everyday and the banal. * * Metro * * The Bird Room is an astonishingly good first novel. I was gripped from the first page. -- M.J.HYLAND An extremely engaging combo of sex, melancholy and killer one-liners - The Bird Room is a beautiful Chinese puzzle of a novel. -- TOBY LITT A strangely merry look at the agony of true love. -- Dazed and Confused Chris Killen's first novel is either disturbingly brilliant or brilliantly disturbing. Whichever, I loved it. -- STEVEN HALL The Bird Room is amazing. Beautiful, laconic and chockablock with uneasy sex - like having a threesome with your girlfriend and Richard Brautigan. -- RICHARD MILWARD Killen has taken a rough stone and polished it into a gem. A book that succeeds in turning daily banality into a thing of great beauty. I loved it. -- EWAN MORRISON A simple enough story...but Killen creates something memorable out of his everyday ingredients. Clever time shifts keep the reader on their toes, there are many darkly funny observations about contemporary urban life and his spare, powerful prose brilliantly captures the loneliness of cities and the agonies of love. * * London Paper * * The writing is sharp... The language is punchy...Killen is looking at dark issues of insecurity and identity through a comic lens...[and] has stayed the likeable side of clever in this whacky little book. * * Irish Times * * Killen has fun playing with identities in a manner that brings to mind David Lynch's film Mulholland Drive. * * Sunday Herald * *